Redecorate the root index w/ a new icon?

[Buster's Uncle]

So here's what the root index just now looked like for me, with one unread post:




How about I make it look like this:


?


I made the icon at 32x for Apolyton, and those are stretched to 38x41 in the lower shoop of the screenie that I've then further reduced for display - I'll need to remake.  It'll look slightly better then, maybe faintly legible.

I do not like this idea least for making our default theme less SMF-generic.


So what say you, my loyal and loving pippelz?

[bvanevery]

Sure, why not.  Interesting is better than boring.

[Geo]

Give it a try, so we'll see it for ourselves.

[Buster's Uncle]

Okydoke.  I'll wait until tomorrow for more feedback, but it's a simple overwrite of the icon files in the theme's image folder on the server.  -Easily undone if I save the originals where I can find them.

[Buster's Uncle]

Okay.

You may not have noticed, but there it is...

?

[bvanevery]

I actually already had a different Alpha Centauri icon because I'm still using the SMAC theme.

[Buster's Uncle]

Huh.  I'd forgotten that one.

Is it better?  I don't recall if the wider icon displays in the default theme, but I could try...

[bvanevery]

The older icon in the SMAC theme is not obviously better.  The lettering is less prominent.  It's more of a landscape layout.  Whereas your current icon offering is a spacescape, overlooking Planet, and recognizable from the game's main menu.  If you hadn't done your current icon, you could have used the old one.  Having done your current icon, I don't see a reason to supplant it.

[Buster's Uncle]

Okay.  Good input - I agree.





-I really should test if I can make something bigger work w/ little effort, though...

[Buster's Uncle]

Heyyyy.  This ain't bad...

[Buster's Uncle]

Oh my, Yes.  I think that's got it.

-embiggens

[bvanevery]

Hadn't noticed the smaller horizontal rectangle icon, but that looks pretty good if a smaller size is needed.

[Buster's Uncle]

That was just a quicky 50 wide to test - but it did look astonishingly better than my first try.  I changed the filenames instead of overwriting.

[Geo]

Of those icons, some have a darker background then others. I assume to indicate unread topis. But which one indicates what? The darker background, or the lighter?

[Buster's Uncle]

It's in the key at the bottom of the root.  Darker is unread.